Bay Area artist and waterman, Martin Machado, was invited to sail with a group of artists and scientists to a far off uninhabited atoll in the middle of the Eastern Pacific. Exotic animals and beautiful tranquil scenes.

Well this is a bit late but I'm just getting back in the swing of things after another brutal but great fishing season up in Alaska. Keep a heads up for Corey Arnold's show this October in Portland, which will be all about our fishing community up there at Graveyard Point.

Anyways, you may remember a somewhat random post I did back in the winter about an art residency I did in Tequisquiapan Mexico. Well I got back down there in the spring to finish up that residency then headed over to La Paz to help prep boats for the big excursion to Clipperton Atoll.

In Tequisquiapan, the Clipperton Project folks strongly encouraged myself and the local artist Alan Pheiffer to do something outside the normal gallery-patron dynamic. So we decided to focus on mask making, a very Mexican tradition that obviously has roots in other areas as well. With the help of some kind arty pals in SF, I brought down a bag full of masks that we made out of paper mache.

Alan did the same in Mexico City and when we met up in Tequis, we held a few mask making workshops in a public square and at a local school.

Honestly I was really hesitant to do this sort of thing, especially in a place I had no business just posting up in public, but it was a pretty rewarding experience. After folks realized we weren't charging for anything or preaching religion or something, they seemed pretty stoked on it.

This may not be cutting edge art, it was mostly kids that were into it, but it was a lot of fun and hopefully we inspired some future artists.

The next day I hopped a bus to Mexico City and flew out to La Paz to help gear up the boats.

(photo: Julie Morel)

Just to briefly explain- this trip has been years in the making and is the brainchild of Jon Bonfiglio, who is either a genius or a complete mad-man. Either way he put together an amazing expedition, inviting 20 artists, writers, and scientists from 8 countries to sail out to a remote uninhabited island. There were all sorts of reasons for the trip, ranging from environmental and ecological to historical interests. But at its core was the desire for an adventure, which in my opinion is a great focus to organize something around. In doing so we had folks from all over the globe doing their best to communicate while working together, standing watches, cooking for each-other, etc. We became a little family as we sailed south from La Paz, 1000 miles to Clipperton Island and then all the way back. We took three boats for the voyage, two sailboats and one powerboat which held the majority of the supplies and dive gear.

(photo: Machado) Santiago and Tom. Tom is a pirate. He bought a 53ft. boat for $1 and fixed it up and now basically runs a floating hostel as he sails literally all around the globe. If you'd like to get some bluewater sailing under your belt, check his boat's site. Its a shared expense deal, but he keeps cost low to get cool but hardworking young people. A real pirate stole his accordion off of Columbia and he wants it back.

After about 24 hours of sailing we anchored up at Cabo Pulmo to drop off Santiago for some GreenPeace event which the other boats were going to attend, something about a new development scheduled to be put in what is now a national marine park. None of my bee's-wax since I'm not a citizen, but it is a damn nice place in the rural condition its in.

(photo: Machado) It was a really nice swim spot, but being the slow boat, we continued on, knowing the others would pass us en route to Clipperton.

(photo: Naim Rahal) For another five days and nights we sailed basically due south, putting us far offshore as the Mexican coastline juts eastward.

(photo: Naim Rahal)

(photo:Naim Rahal)

(photo: Naim Rahal)

(photo:Naim Rahal)

We split up into watches, steering by hand all the time because there was no auto-pilot, or radar, or any of the other technologies I'm used to from bigger ships. There were some amazing nights though, a full moon, dolphins along side, perfect down-wind sailing

(photo:Naim) The wind kicked off at some point and the other sailboat Pisces happened to catch up

(photo: Machado)

Pretty weird meeting pals way out in the middle of nowhere. They had about 9 other participants on a 50-something ft cutter rigged sailboat owned by Gwen, another radical French sailor with more crazy stories. This was not a group to get into a knot tying competition with.

(photo:Naim Rahal)

(photo: Machado) Hey what the heck?

(photo: Machado) Ha, oh geez.

(photo: Naim Rahal)

(photo: Machado) Finally after about 6 days of sailing some tiny palm tress started to pop out of the ocean.

(photo: Machado)

(photo: Naim)

(photo: Naim) Clipperton is currently owned by the French and they occasionally send people there to check things out. We had to get a special permit to land

(photo: Clark Beek) The dive boat, Lucia Celeste, had made it a day earlier and had anchored up on the least exposed side of the island, SE, which was hardly an anchorage.

(photo: David Biller)

This is Otto (Mexican Dive-Master/Space Attorney) and Clark (American Sailor/Journalist). Clark is from the Bay-Area too and has been a bit of a hero of mine for years. He spent around 11 years solo-circumnavigating his sailboat, no big deal. Behind them is one of the five mega-fishing boats that were also out there.

(photo: Biller)

The fishermen that worked on those huge ships were super nice and had even brought our other boats lobster the night before we arrived. Each of the big ships had a half dozen of these smaller power boats they drop with a crane to tug their Purse Seine nets around and send swimmers in to escort dolphins and sharks out of the nets. They were kind enough to ask us aboard their ship to check it out.

(photo: Biller) These guys stay out for 2-3 months following schools of tuna far out to sea. They store them whole in these refrigerated tanks

(photo: Biller)

(photo: Biller) Manon, one of our marine scientists on the crew from Spain.

(photo: Biller) A big ol bluefin

(photo: Biller) The ship was really professional, the bridge reminded me a lot of a containership's.

(photo: Biller) Most of the ships had their own helicopters to help locate the schools of fish

(photo: Biller) Really cool guys, they even let us stay for dinner.

Then the crew encouraged one of us to punch the chef in the stomach.

David Biller here getting punched back

(photo: Biller) I don't think they had seen a woman in months, so needless to say Manon took some harassment. Here one guy gave her the gift of a shirt but said she had to switch it with hers. That's about when we asked to be taken back to our boats.

(photo: Biller) During our first couple of days at the island I got to go on some dives with the science folks. Clipperton is an atoll, a sunken volcano, and the reef drops off to incredible depths very quickly.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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